What did you do to your kart today?

That’s quite a bit of water. Did the track clear up in time?

They canceled half of heat 2 Saturday night and picked up Heat 2 and a shortened Heat 3 Sunday before the finals

The pits sit anywhere from level with to 4 feet lower than the track. The drains just couldn’t keep up with the amount of rain. It was crazy.

We ended up P12 on the weekend. My son went full send down the grass and through a ditch that was swamped from the day before so he wouldn’t TBone a spinning kart from someone else’s dirty move on the straight. So all things considered he did pretty darn well managing the 12. Landed P7 out of 55 drivers on the season points, first year doing it. I’ll take it!

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Ironically, he doesnt show any sign of “toughness” outside of karting. He’s a big pushover in every other aspect of his life. But 2 years ago when he was 9, he had a kid go right over the back of him, on the warmup lap before the race even started, ripped off his air cleaner, broke the sparkplug, the kid’s rear wheel landed on his wrist so hard he folded the steering wheel. Ambulance brought him in, said his wrist wasnt broken, just bruised/sprained. I asked him if he was ok, he said “you go fix the kart, im going to go punch that kid in the face”. I applauded his tenacity, but decided to head home and let his wrist heal.

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Damn that’s some executive functioning there :laughing:

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I love the kid’s attitude. Sounds like we got a future dirt racer! :wink:

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OMG, I spent about 3 hours on my Freeline Brakes.

I don’t have a lot of experience with working on my brakes. I mostly know how to bleed them and change pads. Anyway, I picked up a Ricciardo Kart, and the brakes were totally jacked, as in the dude before me had the pads shimmed with washers, etc., and was using the safety cable to actually pull the lever on the master cylinder.

I took the master cylinder apart (first time ever doing it) and rebuilt it. No problem. When I had the MC off, I pushed the pistons back in on the caliper, like you do when you change pads on a car. I bled the brakes, and put in some new pads, and when I pushed on the brakes, the pads moved in, but didn’t even come close to touching the rotor.

I don’t have any idea how much travel is in the pistons on these Freeline Brakes, but I needed to get the pistons where, at rest, they had the pads pretty close to the rotor. That ended up being the big struggle, time killer. I realized I needed to get more fluid in the system, so I’d depress the brakes, open the MC, then slowly release the brakes and add fluid at the same time. I did this the first time with the pads out. It worked, so I put the pads in, and now the pads did clamp the rotor, but at the end of the pedal travel, so I figured I’d add a little more fluid.

Unfortunately, when I tried to add fluid like I just described, but with the pads installed, the return springs on the pads basically undid what I had already done, and pushed the piston back in once I opened the MC. Fluid was pushed back through the MC and out on to the ground. Total pisser. So I had to pretty much take the pads back out, and do the whole procedure over again. This time, I got the pistons out where the pads contact the rotor about halfway-ish through the pedal stroke, so all is good, but man, that was tedious stuff. Those return springs did me wrong, but now I know.

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I had a similar issue with return springs on my Parolin/Merlin. The entire self-adjust system is dependent on the correct spring tension. Lost a day of practice at the track and multiple sessions at the rock figuring it out :man_facepalming:

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Karting survey

A pic of your setup may be helpful but likely the Freeline brakes are either the two piston caliper or the single piston that leverages both pads. The single piston I believe has return springs whereas the double piston does not. If that is correct the shims are used to reduce the air gap as much as possible as there is only so much travel in the design. It also sounds like you may have some air in the line if you aren’t seeing the pads move enough.




Maintenance of the exhaust system on the vortex rok engine . Also change the springs and the exhaust flange.

It was a surprise that i find that vortex rok has exhaust matting that you have to replace inside the exhausts tail pipe . I thought only rotax has that thing inside .

When the job gets done i will share just to sent joy on the other side of the Atlantic ocean .
Good evening mates .

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Long story short… carerra cup final in sweden. Hang out with swedish prince (security didnt let me take pic as i did last year) talking about my racing career with indy 500 world champion marcus eriksson. Sitting in a porshe cup car. (Team owned by a friend of my dad) and joined porsche parade with my dads porsche (he let me drive it)







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Goofy edit that i made:

Cool day! Seems like fun! Did you try the rig?

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Did some wrenching today.

  • Took some 2 stroke parts off the S-586 that I was missing from S-55 and transferred them over (chain guard and seat struts).
  • Put the 206 motor on the S-586.
  • Installed the new Tillett T-11 seat on the S-586.

Spent alot of time pounding on the seat struts trying to get the seat over far enough from the 206 clutch/ chain to clear the seat strut. Then I had an ah-ha moment. If you take the Oreithal Mount base plate and flip it backwards, it shifts the 206 motor another 2.5 inches away from the seat. My first thought was “why has nobody taught me this.” Here I was going ape $hit with a mallet trying to get things to fit, when I really didn’t have too.

I just ordered another Alfano 6 and I think “fingers crossed” I will now have two operable karts so I can run two classes (X-30 and 206). :crossed_fingers:

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Yep! It costs around 45k… resly cool but i was slower on it then on a normal one…

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Karting brings out the best of us. :laughing:


Did some prep for my last races of the year in two weeks

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Nice Z car, do you race that too?

Never hit the track yet still in the process of putting it together my grandpa use to race one in gt2 at Laguna Seca, Sears Point and some other tracks back in the 80s. We hope to have it done by next spring. Gotta put the engine in all the plumbing etc.


https://youtu.be/4dUrJhkUjSw?si=PzlL0fQQOTwgv4AB This was his car at one point now on display at Z Car Garage.

https://www.zcarblog.com/2014/06/23/events/joel-anderson-datsun-z-car-racer.html

It will be my first experience in a car I can’t wait.

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Awesome! What is your grandpas name? I grew up at Laguna & Sears point. For a time my parents with Chief and Assistant Chief of the Flag crew for the San Francisco region of the SCCA. I literally attended every driver school, regional, national and pro race at both tracks from the mid 70s to the mid 80s. My parents kept going long after that… my Dad worked his final race in 2018 at 85 yeas of age (Tech).

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